Alberta Health Services - On Trial - Day 3

I give it 5 stars, would watch again!

Feb 16, 2022

See Post Notes →Betting it all on Black!

This mornings case against the Province of Alberta and Alberta Health Services started off a little dry but once got rolling with Jeff Rath in the early Afternoon, really took off!

And, it was a complete fucking bloodbath!

The Provinces ‘Expert Witness’, was beaten mercilessly by Jeff and Jeff was definitely the victor of the day.

The morning started off with another review of the Johns Hopkins Meta-Analysis mentioned in previous stacks above. Both sides got to weigh in on this document and the scope of what would be allowed, the Judge will return her verdict tomorrow and this will be followed by a redirect of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Today, I learned a lot and it was with help from the 2 witness that did present testimony, one each for both sides - David Redman followed by counter witness for the Province, Scott Long. Both are Canadian Veterans with a distinct Military Background, David Redman seemed to have a bit of a hand up in that his role with the Military was specific to Emergency Management and Scott Long, well…not so much - but does have some history dealing with Emergencies in the Province.

The battle that raged on today was about the measures that were taken throughout the first couple of Waves of COVID starting in 2020. While David had no part in enacting any of the strategies, as I understand he was involved in the Emergency Planning that went into play and was the foundation of Alberta’s Pandemic Response - 2014ish.

The big takeaway from David is that any Emergency Response has a lot of factors to take in consideration but the largest would be a Cost:Benefit analysis. In these, he basically scorched the Province for using FEAR above truthful information to control the situation and should have instead tried to help build confidence in the Emergency Response Team as well as the Health Care Provider. He mentions this and the fact that the province still haven’t done anything to protect those who are at highest risk, a lot of what I’ve been saying for 2 years, glad to see that I am not alone in this…

What he also went over, which I found was rather interesting, was the Death Toll in relation to Pneumonia vs COVID. Globally, 2.54 Million people die from Pneumonia, per year while for COVID, that number is 2.7 Million people per year. This helps lend a little perspective on what we’ve seen throughout the last couple years and it really not being much more than anything we haven’t seen before. On a pandemic scale, David listed COVID as a Moderate Pandemic. Not quite as low as influenza but nothing in relation to the Spanish Flu.

In this, he said that IF the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were to be considered for removal, there should be a plan in place to list what these look like, in advance, this information should be freely share and that they should assess them on not only their ability to save lives but also to not collapse the economy and shatter lives of the people in the community. Off of this, he said that all Emergency Plans should need to pass the Oakes Test.

Admittedly, I did not know what the Oakes Test was but in a couple of key strokes was able to get it figured out pretty fast:

The Oakes test was created by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1986 case of R v Oakes.[1] The test interprets section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that rights are guaranteed, “subject only to such reasonable limits . . . as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”[2] This means that the government must establish that the benefits of a law outweigh its negative impact—that is, its violation of a Charter right.

This seems a pretty big deal and one that should be more heavily considered by our Prime Minister for the current Freedom Convoy situation that we are dealing with.

Anyways, Scott was brought out to offer counter testimony to what David had offered.

When Scott was introduced, like all those who will be presenting information, he went through a qualifying introductory period where Jeff Rath had issue with him being called as an ‘Expert Witness’ and thought that his testimony should only be considered that of a ‘layperson’ - testimony weighted differently. A large part of this is because Scott still works for the Government and still has his role to consider in his answers. In hindsight, I would think that the province should have just let Jeff take the W on this one and downplayed the value of Scott’s rebuttal. It was that bad.

I say this because this was the best 2 hours worth of entertainment that I’ve had in the last decade, earlier referred to as a Bloodbath!

However, some of the information he provided was actually quite terrifying.

Throughout the last couple years, yes…I have acted like somewhat of an Armchair Epidemiologist and have been fairly critical of the job that was done by the province in response to COVID.

I have stated things like:

If we would have flipped a coin on the pandemic decisions, we stood a better chance of getting something right.
If we did absolutely nothing, we would have fared better than what we did following the pandemic response by the province.

And after listening to Scott answer questions for Jeff…I am actually more confident of these claims.

Holy Shit, our response to COVID was horrible!

Scott is the Acting, Managing Director for the Alberta Emergency Response Team and wasn’t there for the immediate beginning of COVID, his predecessor was broomed off to Parks somewhere after the first while. Scott was unable to comment as to why somebody would be removed from Emergency Management in the Middle of a Global Pandemic and moved into a role with our Parks department but said that role shifting was quite common.

That’s quite the shift in roles, but I am not going to spend a lot of time commenting on this.

In rebuttal information that Scott had offered, during a legal proceeding, was a comment on how bad Sweden did with their pandemic response introducing an article by the New York Times. That’s right.

I mean, that shit might pass in one of my substacks…but when you are presenting evidence in a legal proceeding, I’d think a more reliable source of information would be prudent…as did Jeff.

In this, he wasn’t able to really comment or provide any actual information on what went wrong in Sweden, only to say that the death count was higher.

In addition to this, Scott testified that the Province introduced NPI’s (Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions) but never really gave them a lot of thought prior. When asked about if there was a Cost:Benefit Analysis taken into consideration, Scott literally asked, “What do you mean by Cost:Benefit Analysis?” to which Jeff Replied, “I don’t know, you are supposed to be the expert”!

Almost fell off my chair!

Cost:Benefit Analysis, as was mentioned earlier by David are to take the lives and livelihoods into consideration as well as the entire economic structure of a community. In these, other things that should be taken into consideration are the lives of children and those at low risk possibly being negatively impacted; Businesses and their owners; Increases in Drug and Alcohol use brought on by pandemic responses; Suicide Rates…

As it turns out, though these were a part of the Emergency Plan, weren’t really given that much consideration and worse yet, were not being measured. If you are so focused on keeping everybody healthy and alive but the whole province burns to the ground, this is not to be considered success. I have recently just pointed out a similar side effect of the Masking and possibly Vaccinations on the pre-existing conditions where by Renal Failure has seen an increase since the start of the pandemic..touched on it a little →Here, but plan on doing a deeper dive as time permits.

You see…if epidemiology does change or other factors are worsened by the measures enacted, you have to rationalize the risk vs the reward of these NPI’s and that’s not something that was done nor does it seem like something we are currently doing…and this is fucking terrifying!

Jeff asked Scott how many small businesses went bankrupt due to the measures…to which Scott got a bit deer-in-the-headlights-of-an-oncoming-motor-vehicle and was unable to even speculate on this.

YIKES!

Besides this, when I can actually find the data on Total Mortality for the province and try to parse out excess mortality over and above COVID mortality for 2021, I already know it’s going to be horrible. It was in 2020, it will be even worse following vaccinations, this I already know…I’ve seen early signs from Israel based on their more up-to-date reporting and these deaths happen in a much younger demographic than should.

Moving along…

Scott admitted that they didn’t really know too much about COVID in the beginning, didn’t really weigh out the cost vs benefits from their measures, had a lot of impractical and poorly timed, kneejerk reactions to the pandemic, but was confident that they saved lives, despite never actually seeing any reporting on this. He’s sure that somebody was watching over it but couldn’t say who or provide any evidence that this was being done.

Jeff repeatedly hammered Scott on this, every-time Scott would state - “but these measures worked and saved lives” and Jeff would say, “How do ya know”?

Crickets.

Scott was also caught admitting that some of the measures that were used, were too delayed to be helpful, that COVID was a seasonal virus and there was some comments that eluded to the fact that Hinshaw actually stepped outside of her boundaries on calling Emergency Measures that were outside of her scope…I’m sure this will be brought up when Hinshaw hits the stand…Will have a 5 gallon drum of Popcorn made up for Thursday/Friday for this reason alone!

But of all of this, one thing that Scott was able to conclude, after 5 waves of COVID…their job is done and COVID is Endemic and we can deal with it. Something that most of us were aware of before 5% of the population was vaccinated but he’s finally arrived at this decision, as the Managing Director for the Alberta Emergency Response Team.

I never really figured out how he came to that conclusion but maybe just missed his response to it because when I look at things and assuming that he has access to google and provincial data as well, this is what I see:

It took Alberta until Mid-April to have 5% of the population fully vaccinated.
The current death rate is Higher than when we were 5% vaccinated and higher than when we Alberta initiated it’s REP Program.

I am not disputing that restrictions and mandates should be done, in this, I do agree with Scott. I just have no fucking clue what he was looking at when he came to this conclusion and this too frightens me!

Dr. Jay will be up again first thing tomorrow and then Dr. Kindrachuk. Looking forward to it!

It will take a little time for me to fully process all that I’ve seen today and I may have some more thoughts later on, but if nothing else…Awesome Job today Jeff Rath!

Yakk Stack

Discussion about this post